14/11/2022
NEWS STORY
Daniel Ricciardo has been hit with a 3-place grid penalty for next weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after causing the collision with Kevin Magnussen.
On a day McLaren was seeking to make the most of Alpine's disastrous grid positions following yesterday's Sprint, the Woking outfit went home empty handed with neither of its cars seeing the chequered flag.
While Lando Norris suffered a loss of power after 50 laps, Ricciardo was out just 8 corners into the race after clashing with Kevin Magnussen.
Having spoken to both drivers, reviewed the video from several angles, the GPS data presented by the McLaren team and telemetry from their own sources, the stewards deemed that Ricciardo made contact with Magnussen at Turn 8, causing the Dane to spin, and subsequently both cars crashed.
McLaren explained that in their view Magnussen was slower at the exit of turn eight than the other cars ahead, which made it difficult to judge the closing rate, as the two cars interacted.
Ricciardo explained that in his view, he had slowed sufficiently that he was not going to collide with Magnussen and that he slightly misjudged it.
The stewards acknowledged that the incident was not reckless. However, they determined that the incident was between two cars and was not influenced by multiple
other cars and is therefore not a "first lap incident".
They determined that Magnussen drove in a normal manner for that corner, and that he did not make any erratic moves, and therefore determined that Ricciardo was wholly to blame for the incident.
As a result the Australian has a 3-place grid drop for next week's season finale and 2 penalty points, bringing his 12 month total to 8.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Interlagos here.